Meaning as Horizon
Thomas Rule
Journal of Philosophy of Life Vol.15, No.1 (January 2025):57-72
Abstract
Many contemporary philosophical discussions of the meaning of human existence interpret ‘meaning’ primarily as ‘purpose’, ‘value’, ‘narrative’, and so on. However, these approaches threaten to obscure dimensions of the question. Inspired by thinkers such as Nietzsche and Heidegger, I suggest instead that existential meaning may be most essentially understood in terms of the background or surrounding context which serves as the immediate condition for the possibility of human existence's intelligibility as a whole. Here the ‘meaning’ is that primary distinction which draws the productive limit to human existence, analogously to how a literal horizon circumscribes one’s sensory field and orients one spatially. This approach clarifies the topography of the question itself and is plausibly more relevant to addressing the concerns of those who suffer ‘crises’ of meaning. I suggest that such persons are profoundly disoriented as to their ‘place in existence’ as an intelligibility-making being and seeking an orienting ‘horizon’.
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